Jason Sowell investigates how landscapes adapt to climate change, with a focus on how technologies shape housing and management practices.

He is a registered architect and associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. His research examines the role of landscape-oriented infrastructures for guiding urban adaptations to climate change, with a focus on housing and management scenarios.

Sowell has published research about flood mitigation in cities, propagation technologies, and energy landscapes in the Journal of Architectural Education, Thresholds, and Bracket, respectively. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Pan American Biennale (with Nichole Wiedemann); and awarded by Cleveland’s Urban Design Collaborative for a proposed reclamation of Irishtown Bend in 2007 (with Hope Hasbrouck), Brasilia’s Secretary of Housing for the Sobradinho Social Housing Competition in 2016 (with SIAA), and in 2020 from the Texas Society of Architects and EDRA for the Brownie Neighborhood Park project in Austin (with Kristine Stiphany).

At The University of Texas at Austin, he directed the Master of Landscape Architecture Program, led landscape studios about cemeteries as resilient urban infrastructures, and received the 2010 CELA National Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award.

Sowell is a principal of SSAU (with Kristine Stiphany), a studio focused on creating socially-oriented interactions between landscape and architecture through projects that span a private residence in the Catskills to Farm Lot, a one-square mile Health-Centered Development on the Texas High Plains.